Friday’s attacks come just days after police in Kabul said they had arrested a would-be suicide truck bomber, averting a major incident.

In August, more than 20 people were killed in a bomb attack against worshippers in Kabul. IS, a Sunni Islamist militant group, said it had carried out the attack.

A truck bomb in the Afghan capital in May killed more than 150 people and wounded some 400 more, most of them civilians. No group claimed to be behind that attack but the US-backed Afghan government accused the Haqqani group, an affiliate of the country’s biggest militant group, the Taliban.

Afghanistan has seen a spate of suicide attacks and bombings in recent months.

There have been four major attacks on Afghan security forces this week alone:

On Thursday, 43 Afghan soldiers were killed after two Taliban suicide bombers in Humvee armoured vehicles destroyed a military base in the southern province of Kandahar. Two police officers were also killed in in Ghazni province

On Tuesday, Taliban suicide bombers and gunmen killed at least 41 peoplewhen they stormed a police training centre in the eastern city of Gardez while two police officers

Also on Tuesday, at least 30 people died in car bombings in Ghazni

Afghanistan’s army and police have suffered heavy casualties this year at the hands of the Taliban, a Sunni group who want to re-impose their strict version of Islamic law in the country.